


hoping everything's not lost

by ataxophilia



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Chuck Lives, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Other, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:07:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1348564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataxophilia/pseuds/ataxophilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Raleigh who holds them all together on the truly bad nights, when Mako can’t chase the demons out of Chuck’s mind, when Mako shakes with her own nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hoping everything's not lost

**Author's Note:**

> I care so, so much about these three.
> 
> Unbeta'd.

On bad nights, when his phantom limbs burn like there’s acid eating away at where his flesh used to be, when he’s aching to dig his nails into skin that doesn’t exist anymore, all Chuck wants is the kind of solitude he found with his father, cold and empty and angry. The knowledge of bodies on either side of him sits bitter in his mind, makes him ball his leftover fingers into a fist and lash out with it, jam the stump of his right leg into thighs and hips and anywhere else he can reach, fight and fight and fight in the hope that his fury will be enough to push everyone away from him again. 

It makes Raleigh angry, he knows - he’s learnt that from experience, stored it away where his old pilot tactics still lurk - but Mako is slow to burn where Chuck and Raleigh spark straight up, and she knows to wait him out, to wrap her fingers around the tops of his arms and hold them steady. She never speaks, not with Raleigh there to spew out profanities and then quiet down into shushes and comforting nonsense. She just watches with still eyes, the same eyes Chuck remembers from the first time he met her, back when they were both young and wild and desperately hurting. 

So much of what he loves in Mako is tied up in who he used to be.

Back when he first woke up his rage stayed with him, a constant thrumming under his skin. Sometimes it weighed down on his chest, suffocated him, bringing a familiar panic back to the surface. Sometimes he could feel the old tension of war across all of his body, corporeal and hallucinated, and he half expected to hear a klaxon, to be called back to arms. 

His shrinks told him it was to be expected, this PTSD, that nobody comes back from the brink of death without their share of scars, but that didn’t stop Chuck from hating all the weakness in it. It kept his anger sharp, kept him balanced on a knife-edge despite the lack of an enemy to aim his ferocity at. 

Chuck was practiced at directing his blades at imagined slights, no one knew that as well as he did, but there was less patience for it when there were no Kaiju to distract from any fights he started, so he learnt to focus his rage on onto himself. His physical therapy made the perfect target, for all that he loathed it, so he channeled all his broken, whirlwind fury into it, pushed himself harder than was healthy because it was easier to ignore the jagged parts of his brain and his body when he was beyond exhaustion. Any doctor that expressed concern was shot down with a snarl, and it’s not like they weren’t all well-versed in the ways of jaeger pilots by then, so he was left to it for a handful of blissful weeks until someone, some poor nurse who thought she was helping, mentioned it to Raleigh in passing during one of his regular check-ups.

Raleigh told Mako, like he told Mako everything else, and Mako brought all the wrath she had in her down onto Chuck.

"You will kill yourself," she told him, sadly, at the end of a rant in half-Japanese, half-English. "And it will all have been for nothing."

They watched each other for a beat or two longer, Raleigh in the doorway because he and Mako never went anywhere without each other. Stacker’s ghost hung heavy in the air between them, obvious in all the things Mako had carefully avoided saying. There was the evidence of years of friendship gone sour in the set of Mako’s shoulders; concern that she was only just starting to let herself show, now that they didn’t have to be soldiers any longer. If he had let himself look closely enough, Chuck would have seen the echo of the girl he used to laugh with while sparring in Mako’s face.

But Chuck was never very good at letting himself have anything that would make him happy, so he looked away instead. “I’m not that important,” he said, his one remaining hand clenched tight in his lap. 

Mako’s face dropped back into straight lines, her impassive mask slotting easily back into place. “You could be, if you let yourself,” she spat out, voice blossoming out the promises she couldn’t bring herself to make out loud. Chuck didn’t look up until she had gone, his eyes burning bright with an anger that was covering up something deeper.

"She’s right," Raleigh offered, still hovering half in the room, half out. He shrugged when Chuck turned his heavy gaze onto him. "You’re not meant to be a nobody, Chuck Hansen." 

Four days later, Chuck turned up at Mako’s door, leaning heavily on the crutches he’d stolen from the medical bay, still unsteady on his new leg. She didn’t speak once she’d opened the door, just watched him again, waiting for his first move. Gruffly - apologies were not among his strengths - he ducked his head and said, “I’m sorry, Mako,” in Japanese that stumbled slightly on his tongue. 

For an awful moment, her face didn’t change, and all the resolve Chuck had gathered withered in his chest. Mako could hold onto grudges like lifelines if she wanted to; Chuck had learnt that years ago, the hard way. But she was also one of the few properly good people Chuck knew, better than he could ever hope to be, so he was almost not surprised when all the steel in her expression folded into a soft smile.

"Idiot," she replied, the first word he’d ever learnt in Japanese, and reached out to press a gentle hand to his cheek. "No more of this, okay? Promise me, no more."

"Promise," Chuck told her, softer than he’d intended, smiling back at her despite himself. 

She uses his promise like an anchor now, to tether him to reality when he gets lost in his cracks. Presses her lips to his and whispers her reprimand, “You promised, Chuck,” repeats it until his breathing slows down and he stops trying to break her grip, stops trying to get away from them both, Raleigh curved against his back and Mako flush against his front.

And if Mako is his mooring, then Raleigh is the wind that drives him forward. 

There is something in Mako that is still mourning, that will still be mourning for years to come, Chuck is sure. She laughs with them and she tastes of the sweets she has loved since before Chuck met her and her hair is vibrant against their pillows, but she has hollow spaces underneath that neither Chuck nor Raleigh can fill, despite their best efforts. 

At night, sometimes, she calls out in broken Japanese that they pretend not to understand, her face wet when she turns it into Chuck’s shoulder. 

They both need Raleigh, Mako and Chuck - Raleigh, who still feels the ache where his brother should be, they all know, but who hopes fiercely enough for all of them despite them. 

It’s Raleigh who holds them all together on the truly bad nights, when Mako can’t chase the demons out of Chuck’s mind, when Mako shakes with her own nightmares. He’ll sing some old song in his low, rough voice, one that Chuck and Mako didn’t recognise at first but love now, like a child loves the lullaby its mother sings to it, and tuck his chin against Chuck’s shoulder and stroke his fingers over Mako’s hip, keeping them both afloat. 


End file.
